[AusNOG] Less than 10% of IPv4 Addresses Remain Unallocated

[Geoff Huston]

On 21/01/2010, at 10:57 AM, Paul Grehan wrote:

> Geoff,
> 
> This always seems to be a moot point ending in a finger pointing exercise between SP's and vendors (particularly those that mass produce low cost CPE, and those that provide their chipsets)...
> 
> Is APNIC and other RIR's getting much traction from these vendors as I see SP's as only half the equation....
> 

Thats a good point.

What tends to get tractions with vendors, large and small, is purchase orders! The  problem is that for CPE its not the ISP that conventionally buys the CPE, its the end users who head to their local retail outlet online or in the store and buy the (cheapest) unit they can get their hands on, and, unfortunately, no IPv6 is included in their requirements in general. So unless the ISP wants to package up the CPE and include devices that fold in a good implementation of IPv6 (such as the rather cool FRITZ!Box from germany, and the extremely capable but somewhat pricey for the home consumer Cisco 877 offering), then nothing happens. And why should an ISP do this CPE bundling? Its not for the money, unfortunately, because such packaged CPE offerings generally tend to cost the ISP more in inventory, support and process costs than any revenue that they raise. So getting pressure on the CPE supply chain to fold in IPv6 into their product lines is not proving to be easy.

But its not all just the end user's CPE purchase decisions. The wireless market has its own issues here. What I also find a little worrisome is combining the observation that there is no IPv6 support in the current set of mass-market wireless broadband offerings, with the following:

   The Australian, Wednesday 13 January 2010: "Use of wireless broadband services mushroomed during the past year [2009] to reach more than 2 million subscribers, driven by the popularity of wireless modems and mobile devices such as the iPhone. The Australian Communications and Media Authority's communications report [for 2009] revealed the use of wireless broadband services jumped by 162 per cent in 2008-2009. ... Wireless broadband subscribers accounted for 25 percent of the number of Internet subscribers, up from 11 per cent in 2008."

No only am I am totally unaware of a single wireless broadband service that supports native V6 today in Australia, I also can't find any public disclosure of any real plans plus timelines from this industry sector to support V6 in the near future. Either I'm looking in all the wrong places on the net for this information, or this is an industry that is continually refining and perfecting a "just in time" approach, and is now going to leave the really important actions to the last micro-second - or maybe later! :-)

  Geoff

   Usual Disclaimer about me being opinionated all on my own.